A long way from New York City: Socially stratified contact-induced phonological convergence in Ganluo Ersu (Sichuan, China)

Abstract

Labov's classic study, The Social Stratification of English in New York City (1966), paved the way for generations of researchers to examine sociolinguistic patterns in many different communities (Bell, Sharma, & Britain, 2016). This research paradigm has traditionally tended to focus on Western industrialized communities and large world languages and dialects, leaving many unanswered questions about lesserstudied indigenous minority communities. In this study, we examine whether Labovian models for age, sex, and social stratification (Labov, 1966(Labov, , 2001Trudgill, 1972Trudgill, , 1974 may be effectively applied to a small, endangered Tibeto-Burman language in southwestern China: Ganluo Ersu. Using new field recordings with 97 speakers, we find evidence of phonological change in progress as Ganluo Ersu consonants are converging toward Chinese phonology. The results suggest that when an endangered language undergoes convergence toward a majority language due to intense contact, this convergence is manifested in a socially stratified way that is consistent with many of the predictions of the classic Labovian sociolinguistic principles.

Emergent sociolinguistic variation in severe language endangerment

“…While there is no direct evidence for this from the Swiss sample here, it is noteworthy that the female participants in the Lyonnais sample demonstrated a similar tendency overall (though this was not statistically significant: Fisher's exact, two tailed p = .69). This observation may further indicate that phonological change in obsolescence can follow principles posited for dominant languages in urban contexts, as has been argued recently for Ganluo Ersu (China) by Chirkova et al (2018:138) (cf. Nagy 2011:371).…”

“…It was not possible, however, to elicit tokens across styles for every participant in the study, owing to the old age, frailty, and isolation of many of the speakers (and thus the fact that not all participants could attend group interviews), and so the data are fragmentary. This is, however, to be expected of research undertaken on severely endangered languages, as compared with the bulk of variationist research on dominant languages in urban settings (Blainey 2017; Chirkova, Stanford, & Wang 2018). The author acknowledges here the constraints that the nature of the data places on the discussion and interpretation of findings.…”

Modeling change in contact settings

“…Put differently, while the linguistic behavior of bilinguals may be the source of convergence changes, the mechanism of propagation of these changes in a population group is likely to be identical to that in all other situations of language change and to be driven by social factors (such as prestige). This finding is consistent with a recent quantitative variationist study of the ongoing convergence of the consonant system of Ersu with that of its contact language SWM (Chirkova et al, 2018). Crucially, that study demonstrates that the ongoing phonological convergence between a minority language (Ersu) and a dominant contact language (SWM) manifests itself in a socially stratified way that is consistent with many of the predictions of classic sociolinguistic principles, which were originally stated in relation to monolingual settings.…”

Modelling stylistic variation in threatened and under-documented languages

“…Similarly, Chirkova et al (2018) make use of a wordlist elicitation task in order to document variation in Ganluo Ersu and to test Labovian First Wave principles, namely whether age, sex, social stratification effects emerge in their data. Both studies rely on a necessarily narrow style range, and Drager et al are clear about the limitations and implications of such an approach:…”